And just like that, we have found ourselves on another dark path. Because that is the nature of life isn’t it? The certainty of highs and lows, joys and sadness? There is no escaping it… so we must plod through.
So here we go again, plodding.
I have written before about our experiences with troublesome pregnancies; a child with a rare heart condition, a miscarriage that my body could not let go of, and then the years of waiting for an adoption that never came to pass. It was only after this year when our foster daughter was rightfully reunited with her birth mother that my otherwise off-the-shoulder comments of “maybe we should get pregnant again” turned to more serious prayers of “are we supposed to get pregnant again?” I mean, it is something we have talked about. Especially having waited 8 years for something that never turned out how we thought it would.
So in the late spring of 2020 my husband and I had long conversations and times of devoted prayer to lead us to the decision that, yes, this was what God is wanting for us.
Before you think that this is a no-brainer for a family that is “able” to birth children, I would like to say that our history in the NICU and having to go through a D&C with a body that would not release a baby no longer growing, were two immensely painful factors keeping me from being so casual with this decision. It didn’t mark our choice to pursue adoption (a dream that I have always had), but it sure did make it easier to dismiss the desire for more biological children.
I took pee test after pee test for a few months, disappointed but still hopeful each time that the next time would be “the time”.
And then I got sick.
Like really really sick.
I actually went to my OB first thinking it could be a good sign even though I had been having normal female monthly happenings but I was sent away without so much as a test because of the very likely improbability.
Then I visited my doctor. If I wasn’t pregnant, then I had the nastiest stomach virus and I needed help! Within the first few minutes of this wonderful man sitting down in my room and asking me a few questions, he shared with me the words I wanted – and never wanted – to hear. I was in fact pregnant. But there was also blood in my urine, pointing to a threatened miscarriage.
When we were pregnant with my third I went to every appointment by myself. I had to hear every terrible prognosis and that our baby had passed… by myself. And now, well now I was sitting in a room without a soul to share in my crushing defeat hearing the words I begged God to never hear again, especially alone, and I wasn’t even in the right place to get help.
I changed OBs and saw another doctor two days later who eased my concerns a bit as she showed me a healthy 6 week old baby (much further along than we would have imagined) with a beating heart and answered my questions about the bleeding that I was experiencing. Oh, and that sickness, yeaaaaaa it was still chugging along making every motion almost unbearable but reminding me that it was because of this little life we carried.
I had more ultrasounds and more answers/precautions given. A trip to the ER when the bleeding got pretty bad one night, and another scare at the start of my second trimester. I just kept telling myself that taking it low and slow (aka staying in bed and limiting stress) would give this baby and my body a chance to cool down.
Until this week. Actually, on the day of my 14th anniversary, when all of those very real but manageable concerns came to a screeching halt and reality decided to smack me open-handed across the face. The day I got a call from my doctor after yet another urgent ultrasound.
It wasn’t just a semi-normal tear, implantation bleeding, or small hemorrhage. No, this was something much worse.
The words “partial placenta abruption” rang over the phone directly into my disbelieving ears.
This is not the news anyone wants to hear. This was really bad. I thought we had made it into the clear by leaving the woes of the first trimester behind but now we sat face to face with the scariest diagnosis of them all. A high risk pregnancy requiring full and immediate bedrest, with the chance that the placenta could still continue to separate ending our pregnancy much too early.
That dark road that I have become all to familiar with, the one I wrote about when I penned “The Good in the Awful”, had come around again in another heartbreaking and heavy way. It felt as though I didn’t even know which way was up – which is of course silly when all you’ve done for three months is lay around. It should be the only thing I know for sure. And yet, I felt lost.
I cried a lot that day. I played worship music and read my Bible and I cried. Then after all of that I prayed really blubbery prayers because I was still crying.
But then I woke up today with peace.
I wish I could describe what that feels like. To be in such deep pain, such a dark place, with no understanding of what lies ahead… and yet have… peace.
I scoured the pages of my book and it was still true. Every word of it. I wasn’t wrong. And I forced myself to remember the things that God had already shown me on my dark path when He and I walked together and I could feel a smile creep across my face.
My story is not the worst one I’ve ever heard. There are those who have suffered in innumerable and immeasurable ways. So no, I don’t consider myself to be cursed or deserving of “a break”. But I am hurting now and God sits with me as I process this new pain, not yet quite ready to start walking again.
And not just because the doctor told me that I can’t. ;)
He led me to the psalms this morning. Something I tend to shy away from when I am really emotional because they are so full of emotions themselves. But chapter 139 kept coming to mind.
I’m sure it was the remembrance of the passage in the chapter of how God sees us and forms us in our mother’s wombs – which, believe me, were beautiful words to read – but there was something else on the page that gave me new life. It read:
“If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.” (Psalm 139:11-12)
Do you see it? The darkness, my darkness… your darkness.. isn’t dark to our Father. There is nothing hidden or secret or confusing to Him. He knows it all and He sees as clearly as if the daylight had burst through the night sky. There is no fear of the unknown in His eyes. Not like mine.
So while I sit here, most likely rereading the book I myself wrote and the one that He did, I will not think of myself as needing to be afraid of what lies ahead.
